Best Tourist-Watching Spot (2012)

The Grassy Knoll

Back in the 1980s, a local trickster used to pull the same stunt every November. Around the anniversary of the JFK assassination, November 22, he'd sprinkle a few shell casings around the Grassy Knoll, that hillock just below the Texas School Book Depository and across the street from Dealey Plaza. He just wanted to watch the tourists when they thought they'd found new evidence. The place was picked clean long ago, of course, but it's still a primo observation spot to see crowds of out-of-towners — more than 325,000 visit the Sixth Floor Museum every year — getting their first looks at the historic "triple underpass," the "sniper's perch" window and the railroad tracks where the mysterious "hobos" may or may not have been aiming their own weapons at the president that day in 1963. Wanna really thrill the lookie-loos? Sit on the knoll under an unfurled red umbrella. You'll end up in everybody's vacation pictures.